


Big Girls Don't Cry

by Sleepyhollow_101



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batdad to the rescue, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Fluff, Minor Angst, Stephanie Brown Gets a Hug, Stephanie Brown Needs a Hug, Stephanie Brown is badass but everyone needs help sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:11:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26400142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepyhollow_101/pseuds/Sleepyhollow_101
Summary: Stephanie is a 100% certified badass.But everyone has rough moments.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 7
Kudos: 124





	Big Girls Don't Cry

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing Stephanie! Hopefully she's not OOC, I tried my best. Constructive criticism is always welcome! I want more Stephanie and Bruce bonding moments. Also Bruce is a good dad, even to children that aren't technically his, and I will die on this hill. Also I think I got all the tagging/warnings right, but if I messed something up, please feel free to let me know in the comments! I'm still learning!

Stephanie Brown is… a lot of things.

She’s loud. All the time. Like it’s her default setting or something – that girl has never heard of the concept of an ‘inside voice.’ And she’s brash and quick-witted and sharp-tongued. She’s about a thousand different words but if Bruce had to pick one – just one – to describe her, he’d probably use ‘tough.’ Because goddamn but if she isn’t tough as nails.

Plainly put, Stephanie Brown does not cry.

Except, apparently, until she does.

It happens like this.

Bruce is heading towards one of the sitting rooms – his favorite sitting room, actually, at the end of one of the first-floor hallways, with bay windows that give a beautiful view of the gardens. That view, of course, is obscured tonight, given the lash of rain against the window panes from the thunder storm that started in early afternoon and has grown only stronger as the night has worn on.

He’s tired after a long, soggy patrol, and his ribs hurt where one of Two Face’s henchmen got him with a crowbar, and Alfred probably would have scolded him for that, but apparently, it’s hard to be angry at someone when they walk in looking like a half-drowned cat. Bruce is pretty sure the only thing that stopped him from hissing and spitting as he stalked to the showers was a considerable amount of self-restraint. Alfred was uncharacteristically quiet as he helped tape Bruce’s ribs up, only offering one comment as he placed a hot cup of tea in Bruce’s hand and ushered him upstairs.

“Best be getting on to bed, then, so you won’t find yourself ill come morning.”

And Bruce would love to do that, actually, but something in his brain refuses to settle down. He’s… tense isn’t really the right word. Restless? Anxious? His body is exhausted but his mind is rattling around at a hundred miles an hour and he knows he won’t be able to relax, if he goes up to bed now he’ll just sit there in the dark, eyes open and unseeing, until his patience breaks and he ends up down in his favorite sitting room anyway, so why not skip the whole charade?

That’s what he’s thinking as he grabs the paperback he’s reading from his nightstand and drags himself down to the sitting room. He’ll read for twenty minutes… maybe an hour… maybe a few hours. And if he’s lucky, eventually he’ll sort of just drift off to sleep in his favorite reading chair and sleep so soundly that not even the sun can wake him, and nobody will think to look here so maybe he’ll get a few uninterrupted hours’ rest.

But then, of course, he opens the sitting room door and all his plans are busted to pieces.

Because there, on the floor by the couch, sits Stephanie. She’s curled up, her arms hugging her knees, and there’s tension in the way she’s holding herself that speaks of pain. Bruce immediately checks for blood, but he can’t see any, at least from where he’s standing. He’s about to open his mouth, to ask… something, he isn’t quite sure what, but that doesn’t matter because Stephanie beats him to it.

“I’m not crying!”

She says it like she’s responding to a heinous and unjust accusation, like she can’t believe he’d have the _gall_ to insinuate that she’s anything less than totally in control of her emotions. Which is ridiculous, not only because he hasn’t said anything yet, but also because rigid and uncompromising control of one’s emotions may be sort of a Bruce thing, but it is _definitely_ not a Stephanie thing.

Plus, her voice is awful thick and wavery for someone who “isn’t crying.”

Still, he stands there quietly, listening to her sniffle and somehow hunch further into herself. As soon as he realizes that she is crying, his brain derails and leaves him scrambling for some kind of appropriate response. Because Stephanie is prone to emotional outbursts, sure – she flies into rages like nobody else he’s ever known – but _crying?_

He notices, with a sort of clinically detachment, that he is uncomfortable. Crying children – er, people, because Stephanie would throttle him if she knew he considers her a child, even in the privacy of his own head – are not his forte. Especially not when the child in question is actually a teenager and anything he says can and _will_ be used against him. He has to think of exactly the right thing to say, so as not to sound patronizing but to convey the message that he is concerned, not because she can’t handle herself, of course, but because he genuinely cares about her wellbeing…

“Are you injured?” His voice sounds tense, strained. God, he sounds constipated, and not just emotionally. Surely, he could have thought of something better to say.

Stephanie shrinks a little, still sitting on the hardwood floor, and shakes her head just slightly. “No, I-I’m fine.”

She is the least fine she’s ever sounded in front of Bruce. Which must mean something is really and truly wrong because she hates looking weak, especially in front of him.

He’s still scrambling for the perfect way to talk to her, trying to think of what he would do in this situation with any of his other children, when he stops himself and sighs. He was right before, he can’t keep thinking of her as a child. He needs to think of her as _Stephanie,_ and that means no more pussyfooting around her like she’s a porcelain doll one jostle away from shattering.

He crosses the room and sits on the floor beside her. He considered kneeling in front of her, trying to get her to look him in the eye, but she’d take that as a challenge, because nothing can ever be easy with Stephanie. So he sits next to her instead, and lets the situation rest for just a moment, just long enough for her to understand that he isn’t about to walk away and leave her to her misery, so she better get used to him being there.

She lifts her head just slightly from her folded arms to peak at him. He carefully does not look at her, but raises his arm and settles it across her shoulders.

They sit like that for a while, the tense silence around them slowly relaxing into something more comfortable, almost companionable. It’s got to be close to five in the morning now, and the rain is still pounding against the glass, intermittent lightning illuminating the room by turns. It occurs to him that he didn’t turn the light on. That’s alright – maybe this conversation will be easier in the dark. If a conversation is what’s going to happen. Bruce isn’t totally certain that it is.

Stephanie hasn’t relaxed with the silence. Not exactly. She seems a little less perturbed by his presence, yes, but she’s still holding herself rigidly and that’s concerning. Bruce is planning on letting it lie, except of course he doesn’t, he’s terrible at letting things lie, so instead he decides to ask her again: “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”  
  


She lets out a loud, gusty sigh, and he would call her overdramatic but that’s not strictly true. Stephanie is just… _big_ in how she expresses herself. She’s the opposite of Bruce in nearly every way but that doesn’t make him like her any less. And it certainly isn’t going to stop him from trying to communicate with her, even though that’s just as likely to end in a wisecrack joke as a screaming match.

“I’m… not feeling very well,” she admits, and there’s pain in her voice that he can’t quite place.

“Is it anything I can help with?” he asks.

She sniffles. “Unless you can make me stop being a girl,” she mumbles.

And.

And she probably thought he wouldn’t pick up on what she said, otherwise she wouldn’t have admitted it. She probably thinks he’s totally clueless. Except that he knows a thing or two about women, having dated several of them, _thank you very much,_ and he _does_ have a daughter, though Cass has never made mention of this… type of issue.

Not only does he have some knowledge of what’s bothering her, but he has things that can help. Selina, after all, spends an awful lot of time at the Manor when the mood strikes her, and she’s always prepared.

“I have some Midol upstairs, if you’d like some,” he says quietly. “And a heating pad.”

Stephanie’s head jerks up and she stares at him, wide-eyed and white-faced. And then her cheeks start filling with color and she drops her head down onto her arms again. “Oh my god,” she groans, “I can’t believe I said that out loud. To _you._ I didn’t think… I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry, oh my god.”

Bruce can feel his brow furrow as confusion – plus a little bit of unease – creep up into his brain. “What are you sorry for?”

“It’s… gross. And embarrassing. Like, _super_ embarrassing. The most embarrassing thing that’s maybe ever happened to me.”

And Bruce wants to laugh at that but she sounds genuinely miserable and he can’t make her feel worse, he _won’t._ “Stephanie. It’s not gross. Or embarrassing. It’s normal. And I’m an adult, it’s not exactly news to me.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “It _is_ gross,” she says, resigned. “I don’t… I forgot to bring… things. I don’t have any things.”

He thinks that over for a moment before he responds. “I can probably help with that, too. Do you need a change of clothes?”

She can’t even answer him, just manages the barest nod of her head, refusing to so much as glance in his direction.

“Wait here,” he says, then thinks better of it and tacks on a quick, “please” because there’s nothing Stephanie loves more than doing the opposite of what he tells her to do, if she thinks he’s ordering her around. He stands up and strides out of the room, his body and brain finally feeling in sync now that he has a mission.

His first stop is to his bedroom. He steps into the attached bathroom and fishes in the medicine cabinet until he finds the Midol. Under the sink is Selina’s stash of pads and tampons. She has quite the variety, and he pulls everything out, frowning at the selection. The tampons look easy enough – there’s just one box and it’s a regular. _Regular?_ He thinks. Okay, maybe he doesn’t know as much about menstruation as he thought he did. Well, no matter, he grabs a handful and sets them on the counter. The pads are the hard part, anyway. There’s overnight pads and liners and pads with wings and pads _without_ wings…

He reads the packaging information for all of them before deciding to just take one of each. No, no, two of each, just to be safe.

Next, he grabs the heating pad from its spot in the closet. He piles all his pilfered goods together and heads down to the Cave.

Alfred has long since stocked the Cave with extra supplies of practically everything a person could need, and that includes clothes. He finds a shirt, a sweatshirt, and sweatpants that look like they may fit Steph. He also grabs an unopened package of underwear and stuffs it under the bundle of clothes, feeling entirely too awkward.

As he makes his way back up the stairs, he realizes it’s quiet and he’s not run into any of his other children tonight. Which, he thinks now, makes sense. Dick is in Bludhaven, Tim is with the Titans, Cass is in Hong Kong on a special assignment, Damian is spending the night with Jon, and Jason doesn’t exactly make it a point to walk through the front door, much less spend the night.

Bruce is all Stephanie’s got, for the time being.

He makes a quick detour to the kitchen before heading back to the sitting room, his bundle of goodies in tow.

He flicks on the light this time, and can see Stephanie has stopped crying, although her face is blotchy with evidence of her tears. She’s huddled on her sweatshirt, clearly still uncomfortable. Her face collapses into obvious relief when she sees what Bruce has managed to scavenge.

“Here,” he says, handing her the pile as she stiffly pushes herself to her feet.

She snatches it out of his hand. “Thank you,” she says as she hurries out the door to the nearest bathroom. Bruce picks up his book and tea from where he had forgotten them on the floor and settles into his favorite reading chair.

He isn’t sure she’ll be back – she may take the offered clothing and supplies and then bolt out the front door, avoiding him like the plague until her (needless, in Bruce’s opinion) embarrassment wears off. So, he cracks open his book to page 214 where he’d left off and sips at his now-cold tea.

About half an hour later, he hears the door crack open and Stephanie pads into the room on quiet feet.

She settles herself onto the couch as Bruce sets his book down. “Do you want me to set up the heating pad?”

“No, no – I got it,” she says. She holds up the bag he’d grabbed from the kitchen. “Dove chocolate? Seriously? How’d you hide this from Alfred?”

“Alfred doesn’t know _everything,_ ” he grumbles, and that startles a laugh out of her.

“I’m telling him you said that,” she says.

“You know I can still take that chocolate away from you, right?”

She gasps and clutches the bag to her chest. “You _wouldn’t!_ ”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“Do it and I’ll tell everyone you read Nora Roberts. _Vision in White?_ Really?”

Bruce glares at her. “Nora Roberts is a treasure, I’ll have you know.”

Stephanie dissolves into peals of laughter until it finally gets to be too much and she winces. “Ow,” she grumbles, turning on the heating pad and settling back into the couch.

“Feeling better?” Bruce asks.

“Yeah,” she says, and her embarrassment over the whole situation seems to have abated a little. Good. “Sorry about earlier.”

“There’s no need to apologize.”

“And thanks for the… stuff. Although, I definitely didn’t need, like, eight pads.”

Bruce shrugs. “I wasn’t sure which ones to get.”

He thinks she might crack another joke but instead she goes quiet, fiddling with the tassels on the blanket she’s pulled from the back of the couch. It’s a putrid shade of green and doesn’t look very comfortable. He wonders if he can scrounge up something better from one of the linen closets. “I can’t afford any.”

Bruce blinks, his momentary mental derailment derailed. “Pardon?”

She looks more than embarrassed now, she looks _humiliated._ Her cheeks are a blotchy red color and she’s letting her hair fall over her face like she’s hiding behind it. “I can’t afford any… supplies right now. For this. Mom’s not… doing very well. I’ve been paying the bills with my part time job. I thought I could handle it but I ran out of money and that stuff is expensive. I thought I could get some from Cass’s room, but I couldn’t find any.”

Bruce has no idea what to say to that. He feels something unpleasant twist in his gut. He looks at this teenage girl, with the misery lurking in her eyes and thinks about what her life is like. School on top of work on top of patrol. Caring for a mother who’s too drugged out of her mind to tell up from down. Doing it alone, believing she can’t ask for help. Not knowing how to ask for help.

It makes him angry. It rightly pisses him off, actually. Because the world is unfair, and he knows that, but it shouldn’t be. Not for girls like Stephanie. Not for anybody, if he could help it. But he can’t.

Knowing that doesn’t make it any less infuriating.

“Do you want to stay here tonight?” he asks.

She looks at him, stares at him hard, as though trying to figure out his game.

His game is simple this time. He wants her here, where he knows she’ll be taken care of. Where he can get her more meds if she needs them, where Alfred will make her an actual, substantial breakfast in the morning, where she can get a good night’s rest in one of the guest bedrooms, the one two doors down from Cass’s room, where Stephanie has left behind a purple eggplant pillow, the room where Alfred leaves the downy-soft blanket she likes so much, just in case.

He wants her to be okay.

She’s clearly thinking about it.

“You sure I won’t be… in the way?”

As though she could ever be in the way. The Manor is big enough for a hundred of her. But he knows that isn’t what she means. She feels unwelcome here, like she doesn’t quite fit, like her edges are too big and too sharp.

Bruce wants to tell her that he doesn’t feel like he fits either, living in the shadows of his parents’ memories, growing up in a place that spent so many years so unjustly empty. He knows what it’s like, to feel like you don’t belong. But if he’s welcome at the Manor, somehow, after all these years and all the mistakes he’s made, then by god, Stephanie is, too.

“You’re never in the way. I’d be happy if you stayed,” he says, and he means it.

And maybe Stephanie can tell, because she doesn’t fight him on it. Instead, some tension he didn’t realize she was still carrying bleeds out of her and she relaxes fully back into the cushions, her eyes finally starting to droop.

Bruce gets up and turns out the overhead light before returning to his chair and turning on his reading lamp. He reads for a while, cognizant of Stephanie’s slow, rhythmic breathing in the background as she nods off. Eventually, his own eyes become heavy and he joins her in quiet, dreamless sleep.

* * *

In the morning, they don’t talk about it. Stephanie is back to her cheery self, poking and teasing at Bruce as he tries not to fall asleep headfirst in his morning – well, early afternoon – cup of coffee. Then she’s gone like a shot out the door, apparently late for work and refusing to let Alfred drive her where she needs to go. Stubborn, spitfire Stephanie is back in action, and Bruce tries not to make it obvious how happy, how relieved that makes him.

And if Stephanie just so happens to find a box of pads and a box of tampons in her backpack later that day, well, she doesn’t say anything about that, either.

Sometimes, silence can mean everything.


End file.
